Beyond the Two-Parent Family

Three to four percent of teenagers lived in cohabiting families in 1997 and these percentages did not vary dramatically by race/ethnicity. This brief explores how 3 measures of teen well-being vary by family structure and race/ethnicity. Based on these three measures of well-being, living with a single mother and her boyfriend, who was not the teen's father, was not better than living in a single-mother family. For whites and Hispanics, it was significantly worse. Black teenagers who lived with married biological parents or with their mothers and step/adoptive fathers fared better on these 3 measures of well-being than those who were living with a single mother or with a single mother and her boyfriend.